Ch 9: Urban Geography

What is urban?

the built-up space of the central city and the suburbs

• includes the city and surrounding environments connected to the city

• distinctively non rural and non agricultural

What is a city?

a city is an agglomeration of people and buildings clustered together to serve as a center of politics, culture, and economics.

Where/what are the hearths of urbanization?

the first agricultural hearth was in Southwest Asia, known as the Fertile Crescent

• agricultural surplus and social stratification made cities grow and stabilize.

• the leadership class or urban elite were decision makers and organizers who controlled resources.

What is the first urban revolution?

• the innovation of the city

• happened in six places (independent intervention)

• the six hearths are connected to agriculture.

What are the six hearths of urbanization?

1. Mesopotamia (3500 BCE)

2. Nile River valley (3200)

3. Indus River Valley (2200)

4. Huang He Valley (1500)

5. Mesoamerica (1100)

6. Peru (900)

What is the role of the ancient city in society?

• chief marketplaces

• anchors of society and culture

• power, change, and authority is here

• economic nodes

How did urbanization diffusion?

• populations in Mesopotamia grew with steady food supply and sedentry lifestyle.

• people migrated from hearth, diffused knowledge of agriculture and urbanization.

What are greek cities like?

• a secondary hearth of urbanization because city and function diffused through European colonialism.

• diffused from Greece to Roman Empire

• have acropolis where people built structures

• the market or Agora was the focus of commercial activity

What were Roman cities?

• succeeded the Etruscans and Greeks as rulers

• included areas in the mediterranean, Europe, and north africa

• the site of a city is its absolute location for advantages or as a center

• the situation of city is based on its role in the larger surrounding context

  • changed over time

What is urban morphology?

a city’s layout including physical form and structure

• the romans adopted how Greeks planned their colonial cities using a rectangular, grid pattern.

What is functional zonation?

• different segments or areas of a city serve different purposes or function

  • the Forum in Rome

What is the second urban revolution?

• in 1800’s, western Europe was mostly rural

• 1600-1700, Europeans invented a series of important improvements in agriculture

• improving organization of production, market collaboration, and storage capacities.

• many industrial cities grew from villages or along canals and river routes.

What were conditions like in cities?

• living and working conditions were not good

• lots of acitivity

• cities covered with soot in the British Midlands were deemed “black towns”

What happened in the mid 1800’s"?

• the type of manufacturing and location changed

• Karl Marx and Frederick Engels encouraged “workers of the world” to unite

  • working conditions starting to be better

What is a trade area?

an adjacent region within which its influence is dominant.

What is a primate city?

• from Mark Jefferson

• a “country’s leading city, always disproportionately large and exceptionally expressive of feeling and national capacity”

What is central place theory?

each central place had a complementary region for trade and the city has a monopoly on some goods, these are created with hexagons.

What is the Sun Belt phenomenon?

the movement of millions of people in America from the northern area to the South and southwest.

What is the concentric zone model?

Ernest Burgess’s study of Chicago divided the city into five zones.

1. CBD is divided into subdistricts

2. transition zones are between residential and business areas.

3. Zone 3 are homes where people are part of the blue-collar labor force.

4. Zone consists of middle-class residences.

5. Zone 5 is where suburban places are.

What is the sector model?

• from Homer Hoyt

• a city grow outward from a center so a low-rest area could extend from the CBD to the out edge, creating zones like pie.

• the pie shaped pieces are high rent residential, intermediate rent residential, low-rent residential, education, recreation, industrial, and transportation areas.

What is the multiple nuclei model?

• Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman

• recognizes that CBD is losing its dominant position as the single nucleus of the urban area.

What does CBD mean?

Central Business District

What is an edge city?

Suburban downtowns developed around big regional shopping centers.

What is a shantytown?

unplanned groups of dwellings and shelters made from iron, cardboard, and wood around cities.

What is a problem with city government?

Some do not have the resources to adequately medicate, police, or educate growing populations.

What are zoning laws?

cities define areas of the city and designate the kinds of development allowed in each zone.

How were urban spaces defined and segregated in the US?

• blockbusting and redlining

• white flight - movement of white people from cities to the suburbs.

What is gentrification?

the rehabilitation of houses in older neighborhoods.

What is urban sprawl?

unrestricted growth of commercial and housing developments and roads over large expanses of land, with little concern for urban planning.

What is the goal of gated communities?

a space of safety within the uncertainty of the urban environment.